by Roslyn Woods
“I’ll be right there,” Dean said.
He arrived just before Leo did. Billie saw him rushing in, his tall form seeming to fill the room, his dark hair careless. His eyes were blue and piercing as they searched, and from the clenching of his jaw it was clear Dean was too focused to be aware of the heads that turned when he walked in.
“Where is she?” he asked as he found Billie.
“She’s still in the treatment room.”
Just then, Leo came in through the sliding doors.
“What’s happened?” the small man wanted to know as he rushed toward his boyfriend and business partner, his compact body telegraphing the stress he was feeling. “Who’s hurt if it’s not you or Shell?” he asked.
“You’ll never believe it!” Billie told him. “There we were trying to close up the gallery, and this old man comes in, and who should he be but Edwin Baird!”
“Oh my God!” Leo declared. “Edwin Baird! But what happened?”
“I think he had a heart attack or something. We had only just written up a receipt. We’re planning to sell the drawings and paintings he’s brought in for a thirty-five percent commission, and he’s going to show us his studio. Only as soon as I printed out the receipt, he stood up and started clutching his chest and dropping to the floor. Thank God Shell caught him!”
“Oh, Jesus,” said Dean, nervously running a hand through his hair.
“He asked for her from the room where they’re treating him,” Billie continued, “but she’s been in there for quite a while. I think she should be out soon.”
“This can’t be good for Shell,” Leo said.
“My thoughts exactly,” Billie replied. “She hasn’t been herself since the kidnapping, and I’m just going to say it. I’ve been worrying about whether or not the psychologist she’s seeing is giving her good advice.”
“Well,” Leo argued, “I for one think the self-defense class is a great idea on the part of the counselor!”
“The police,” Dean corrected. “The police were the first to suggest self-defense classes. Anyway, Shell’s trying,” said Dean. “Let’s just give her some time.”
“Of course you’re right,” Leo answered, giving Billie a stern look.
Dean was oblivious to this. He was anxiously looking by turns from the reception desk to the double doors that led from the waiting area into one of the hospital wings, and he seemed too nervous to sit in the empty chair beside the one Leo had taken. He began pacing back and forth on the blue and gray linoleum while the gallery partners watched him, Billie unable to keep his right foot from incessantly tapping.
It was only another five minutes before Shell came through the swinging doors that led from the emergency wing of the hospital. Her skin was colorless, and Billie knew the moment he saw her that the news wasn’t good. She didn’t speak but walked straight to Dean, slipped her arms around his waist, and buried her face in his shoulder.
Billie jumped up from the chair. “Is he okay?” he asked. He knew the answer, but he couldn’t keep himself from asking. There was something dull about Shell, a spiritless look in her eyes, and he was glad Dean was here, giving her the support she obviously needed.
It took her a few seconds to respond, turning her face away from Dean’s neck so she could look at him, Leo at his side.
“No,” she said.
On the drive home from the hospital, Dean waited as long as he could for Shell to start talking. Finally he spoke.
“Baby, are you okay?”
“I don’t know why it’s so upsetting. I didn’t even know the man,” she said, her voice a little shaky.
Keeping his eyes on the road, Dean reached across the console and found her hand. “It’s normal, Shell. You’ve been through too much and you’re still emotionally vulnerable. A man died in your presence tonight. It’s very distressing.” He squeezed her hand. “This would be upsetting to anyone.”
“I guess so,” she said.
He glanced toward her but could only see the back of her head, the blond waves falling haphazardly past her shoulders. She was looking out the window. Maybe she was hiding tears.
“And he wanted to talk to me about his daughter, Dean.” She paused and swallowed while he waited for her to continue. “I think I still have a lot of emotions about losing my dad even though it was so long ago.”
“I know you do,” he answered as he pulled the Jeep into their neighborhood, Austin’s Hyde Park. It was dark now, but the street lights in the trees cast shadows over the sidewalks, and he was glad he had left their bungalow’s porch light on.
“And I remembered Edwin Baird from when he came into the gallery before,” she continued, as he parked the car in the carport under the wisteria vines. “I remember how he caught my attention, just a sort of dignified older man. I didn’t know why I noticed him—didn’t know who he was. Not until tonight.”
“But you knew his reputation. Who doesn’t? I remember hearing about him when I was just a kid—How this nationally successful artist just dropped out, and no one knew where he’d gone.”
“And no one knew where he came from either. It’s still a mystery,” she said, looking straight ahead. “If the man who died tonight was genuinely Edwin Baird, and I have every reason to believe he was, then I have a web to unravel, and I’m not sure where to start.”
“Why?”
“We have a studio address. No phone. And since the work is so valuable, we have to be careful who we give it to. It’s not like people just know where Edwin Baird resides. He disappeared a long time ago and apparently didn’t want to be found.”
“You’re pretty sure he was Edwin Baird, then?”
“Sure. I don’t know what reason he would have to lie unless he’d stolen the artwork. Why would a dying man do that?”
“And you think he knew he was dying?”
“I don’t know. It sort of makes sense, if he knew he didn’t have much time, that he’d decide to sell and leave money in an account or something, right? Maybe so his family would have some cash to work with? Anyway, the artwork looks like the work I’ve seen in photographs of Edwin Baird’s art. I feel sure that at least the works are his, and he’s the right age to be him. It’s just, why?”
They were just sitting there in the dark, lost in their conversation when Shell noticed that Sadie and Bitsy were barking.
“Maybe we should go in,” she said.
“Shell,” Dean was ignoring the suggestion, “someone came into the gallery, and it’s sad that he died tonight, but it’s not your responsibility to work out why he decided to come out of hiding.”
“I know, but I feel like I need to at least find the daughter. And aren’t you a little curious? Do you know how valuable the artwork is? There are twenty-two pieces in that portfolio—all drawings and watercolors by an incredibly famous and successful artist. Billie said the smallest piece should be offered at fifty thousand dollars, maybe more. You do the math! We have to return his work to someone, and I really don’t want to make a mistake.”
“Okay, but can’t you just do that? Garrett was killed only two months ago, and you haven’t recovered from what you went through.”
Dean was still trying to get a good read on Shell’s emotions, and he bit his lip at his own mention of Garrett’s name. He hated knowing that every time they talked about him Shell felt the stabbing memory of the murder of her friend and business partner. He knew that mentioning Garrett also brought back the memory of her own kidnapping and sick feelings of fear and angst.
“I have recovered. I’m fine. I’m taking the self-defense classes, and I’m seeing the counselor twice a week,” she said, starting to open her door, still not looking at him. “Besides, it’s just a couple of questions at this point, not a dangerous mystery,” she said over her shoulder.
“What questions?”
She sat back in the seat again and turned to face him, her large, aquamarine eyes a little too shiny in the filtered porch light.
“Where is t
he daughter, and how can I get the work to her?”
Something snapped in him then. “Shell, honey, you wake up in the middle of the night screaming about half the time! You know you’re not recovered, and I know how you get obsessed. Why can’t Billie handle this? Don’t you think your emotions are too raw to start worrying—”
“I’m getting better,” she insisted, looking back at him, the light playing over her features. “I just need to know who Edwin Baird’s daughter is. I’d like to know why he decided to sell now, but I realize my only real business in this situation is to return the work to the family.”
“Okay,” he said, giving in. He felt weak. He couldn’t fight her even when he was sure he was right.
Shell stared at him for a few seconds. She had to know he was just trying to protect her, that he felt guilty about failing to protect her after Garrett’s murder.
“Listen,” she said. “Edwin Baird told me something when he had them call me into his treatment room.”
“What?”
“He wanted me to tell his daughter something,” she answered, turning to look out the window into the darkness again.
“What was it?” he repeated, touching her shoulder.
“He wanted me to tell her he loved her.”
Her voice faltered, and Dean reached for her face and tilted her chin so he could see her teary eyes.
“I know you’re tender-hearted about this, but I imagine she knows,” he said quietly.
“Maybe not.”
“Okay, so why wouldn’t she know her dad loves her?”
“That’s what I have to find out.”
“Are you sure you have to do this? What will Dr. Shapiro say?”
“She’ll know I have to get on with life, with doing the things I would have done before—before everything happened. It was a dying man’s request.”
He searched her face a few moments longer before he leaned forward and kissed her.
“Then I’ll help you if I can,” he said.
Chapter 3
Tuesday, August 4, 9 a.m.—Shell
It was even hotter on Tuesday morning. Shell wore a simple, yellow shift with leather sandals and wound her thick, blond hair into a large clip at the back of her head, just wanting to keep her neck bare.
In the backyard, she threw the ball a couple of times for Sadie, the German shepherd and golden mix who had saved her life two months earlier. Bitsy, mostly chihuahua, barked at a cat on the back fence above Dean’s Ponderosa tomatoes and occasionally looked back at Shell to see if she noticed how she protected the yard.
“Sorry I can’t play longer, girls,” Shell called, turning back toward the house. “I have to go to work.”
She filled their dishes in the kitchen and gave each of them a pat. Dean had just finished his coffee, and they locked up the house and got into the Jeep.
“I’ll come by at five,” he said, as they approached Lavaca and 5th Street, the city humming with traffic at nine o’clock. “You won’t forget tonight’s our dinner night at Margie and Donald’s?”
“I’m not forgetting.”
Shell was glad Dean had been driving her to the gallery the last few days. It meant she didn’t have to park her car in one of the busiest parts of the city, which was daily becoming more impacted. People from everywhere seemed to be flocking to Austin. Musicians, retirees, even people in the movie industry were finding homes here. The fact that Dean was driving her to work also meant they could go straight to her best friend’s house when he picked her up after work this evening. Their weekly dinner with Margie and Donald was something they both enjoyed.
“Shell?” he said as he pulled up to the curb on 5th.
She noticed a grubby young man who was seated on the sidewalk near the wall of the building between the gallery and Jensen’s bakery with a cigarette in his mouth and a guitar in his hands. He was often there, an open guitar case beside him for tips, and Shell secretly thought he liked the spot because Mary Anne, the owner of the bakery, sometimes gave him a coffee and cinnamon roll. Even with the window of the Jeep closed, Shell could hear the melody line of his strings, “Angel Flying too Close to the Ground.”
“Yes?”
“I know what you’re going to try to do, just try not to carry it as a weight on your shoulders,” Dean said. “You don’t have to fix everything.”
“Okay. But I need you to help by supporting me in doing what I feel I must do.”
“I will,” he answered. “You know I will.”
As soon as she had disabled the gallery’s alarm, Shell locked the glass entry door to the street and hurried past the creamy walls of the entry’s display area and into the conference room to look at Edwin Baird’s artwork again.
It still lay on the mahogany table, spread out just as the three of them had left it the night before. Shell went to the window and opened the vertical blinds, letting some natural light fall on the pieces. There wasn’t much, since the window faced the brick wall of the adjacent building, only five feet’s distance away, but she knew even a little natural light might yield a different quality to the colors in Edwin Baird’s work.
The colorful street scenes—which she assumed must have been painted right here in Austin between thirty-five and forty years ago—were even more stunning this morning. Most of the works had penciled dates on the backs. April/1976. June/1979. The portrait of the child with soft curls—done in graphite—said September/1980.
She was still pondering over what to do with the work when Billie arrived wearing a navy linen suit with a lavender shirt and lime-green bow tie. He wandered into the conference room with a doleful expression on his face, and Shell knew he was mourning the loss of the business they had come so close to having with Edwin Baird.
“I’m down about it, too, Billie,” she said. “But we have to figure out how to get this artwork back to Edwin Baird’s family.”
The only information they had about the artist was on the note he had given to Shell the night before. It read: Edwin Baird/5100 Burleson Road #223. That was it. He himself had called it a studio, and they had talked about meeting there.
“There’s not even a phone number on that card! I just don’t know how we’re supposed to find the family, Shell. We were going to meet him at that studio. You can go over there, but you’ll just find a locked building,” Billie said, seating himself in one of the wooden chairs at the table. “Leo has already been lecturing me to not brood about it! Someone will have to contact us. In the meantime, the art isn’t taking up much space. I’ll put it all back in the portfolio and lock it in the storage closet, but what a loss!”
“What a loss?” she repeated. “Billie! The man died!”
“I meant what a loss to the art world!”
“I know you wanted to sell his work here,” she argued.
“All right, I admit it, I did. That doesn’t mean I’m not sorry about him dying. It’s sad for him and the people who love him, and I feel awful that you had to be there when it happened, but I also see his death as a loss to the art world. Who knows what his family might do with this work? We were so close to bringing him back from the shadows.”
“It was his choice to stay hidden all these years, Billie. His choice. Apparently he didn’t want to be in the spotlight before. We have to respect his family and the way he handled things. Our responsibility now is to return his work to the people it means something to.”
“Shell, darling, what if his family just wants to sell it off to investors who’ll hide it away from the eyes of all the people in the art community who would really love it?”
“I don’t know what to say or do about that,” she answered, feeling weary.
“Honey, are you okay? I was worried about you last night.”
“I’m fine. I feel better today.”
“But now you’re really worried about this stuff.”
“It’s true I can’t stop thinking about it. Have you considered the fact that Edwin Baird could have shown anywhere? New York!
Paris! Anywhere!” Shell said. “Why choose our gallery, which, let’s face it, is just getting on its feet? Except for right here in Austin, we’re virtually unknown.”
“Maybe he liked the idea of helping some people who are trying to get a new place going—”
“I think that’s doubtful. It’s possible we were in the right place—right here in Austin and just small enough to get things moving quickly.”
“I suppose that’s true. The bigger galleries have their shows booked out months—even up to two years—in advance.”
Shell pondered for a moment before she shrugged. “Anyway, we’re not in a position to make decisions about the art. We just have to do right by Edwin Baird.”
“But sweetheart, he’s the one who decided to have a show!”
“And then he died.”
“Oh, I know! ” Billie answered. “I guess I’ll have to resign myself to handling ordinary contracts with ordinary artists.”
“What? We represent some wonderful artists in our gallery!”
“I know, I know,” he said, a little dejectedly. “I’m going to go back to the office to try to get a little work done while I feel sorry for us. Leo should be here soon. Can you man the front?”
“Of course.”
“By the way, you look very pretty, as always, and I like the yellow dress,” he said, still pouting, but trying to let her know he wasn’t mad at her about their little disagreement.
“Thank you. I like your green tie,” she said as he turned, and she watched his retreating figure as he headed for the office.
“I was trying to cheer us both up when I picked it out for today,” he said over his shoulder.